Dad always wanted me to be a lawyer but ……
SPEECH FOR UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND
LAW GRADUATES DINNER
13 October 2006
Dad always wanted me to be a lawyer but ……
When you saw the title to my after-dinner speech on the invitation to this dinner – “Dad always wanted me to be a lawyer but …” you probably thought you were in for a bit of group therapy, in which I exposed the psychological scars inflicted on a sensitive youth who wanted to be a composer by a tyrannical father who wanted him to follow a solid bourgeois career in the legal profession. Well, I have to confess that that title, if not positively misleading and deceptive, is at least likely to be so.
My Dad was actually a very amiable man and he thought I should be a librarian.
What I’m really going to talk about is OTHER PEOPLE who really wanted to be composers but whose fathers made them do law – although in many cases, not for long. You’ll probably be surprised at the number of famous composers who, when it comes down to it, are really nothing but failed lawyers.
Take George Frederic Handel, for example. His father was a barber-surgeon who wanted better things for his son than to be a musician. When the boy displayed a talent for music his father forbade any musical instrument in the house. Handel used to practice and study scores in secret. You can imagine the scenes when his Dad found out. Handel was a very strong willed, impetuous character with a violent temper, who thought he knew everything. No wonder his father thought he would make a good lawyer. He would have made an ideal judge! Anyway, by the age of 17 young George forced his father give in and let him study music. If he had become a lawyer he might not have been so contemptuous of the laws of copyright. When he was accused of stealing a tune from his rival, Bononcini, and using it in his own music, Handel said loftily: “Bah! It was too good for him – he wouldn’t have known what to do with it!”
Did you know Tchaikovsky not only studied law but actually graduated from the School of Jurisprudence in St Petersburg in 1859. He went to work in the Ministry of Justice as a lawyer for four years until he resigned to devote himself to music. At least, that was his story. He was really dismissed for incompetence. He was supposed to be editing the law reports for the St Petersburgh District Court. A file note recently discovered in Tchaikovsky’s file in the Ministry’s personnel file says: “He’s so dumb he thinks a headnote is a soprano’s top C.”
The Russian composers all seem to be failed lawyers. Stravinsky, the most famous composer of the 2oth Century, studied law at the St Petersburgh University from the age of 17, under heavy parental pressure. It wasn’t that he wanted to be a composer instead of a lawyer. It was more that he just that he didn’t feel like doing anything, really. When by the of 23 he hadn’t got past first year it was his law professor who suggested he become a musician: an organ-grinder. He did go on to become an organ grinder of sorts. His most famous work, The Rite of Spring, premiered in Paris in 1913 was regarded as so horrifically awful to listen to that the first night audience literally rioted. Fights broke out, society ladies screamed obscenities at each other, the orchestra was drowned out, the police had to break up the affray. In other words, a triumph!
When The Rite of Spring was performed in America everyone hated it there too. The Boston Herald published a poem on the front page which went:
Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring,
What right had he to write the thing,
Against our helpless ears to fling
Its crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing?
He who could write the Rite of Spring,
If I be right, by right should swing!
With Stravinsky’s talent for attracting headlines, he would have made a great American trial attorney.
People sometime say to me “You’re a judge AND a composer? That’s an unusual combination.” But actually it’s not so unusual. In fact, if you do a bit of research you find judges who are composers are pretty commonplace.
For example, there was Benedetto Marcello, who was born in Venice in 1686 into an aristocratic family. He was musically very gifted but his father regarded music as a hobby not a career and he was pressured into the law. He became a lawyer and in fact had an illustrious career as a judge, to the point where in 1730 he was made governor of a large town and ended his career as chancellor of a province. But he also became a very successful composer, writing several oratorios, operas, over 400 cantatas and published collections of orchestral and instrumental music. His most famous work was a setting of 50 Psalms which achieved international acclaim and were performed throughout Europe and in England. His popularity as a composer for voice lasted well into the 19 th century.
Then there was extra-ordinary Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. He was born in 1776 in East Prussia, now Russia. He was a composer who wrote symphonies, chamber works and operas, one of which, Undine, was premiered for the birthday of the Prussian King, Friedrich Wilhelm III in Berlin in 1816 and achieved considerable success. He was an opera conductor and a writer of fantasies and stories.
You might think you have never heard of Hoffmann but one of his stories became Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet, several of his other stories became Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman, and others inspired Wagner’s operas, Tannhauser and Die Meistersinger.
But as well as being a composer Hoffmann was also a highly respected judge. He began his law studies in 1792 at the University of Konigsberg, graduated in 1795 achieving high marks and went into the judiciary. In 1800 he became a superior court judge, offended some people in high office and, of course, was promoted to keep him quiet. Nevertheless he must have been well regarded as a judge because he was again promoted in 1816 and in 1821 became a member of the superior appeals court.
There was Francis Hopkinson. Born in Philadelphia in 1737, he studied law and was admitted to the Bar in1765. He was elected to the Continental Congress to represent New Jersey in 1776 and was one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. After the War of Independence he was appointed as a Judge of the Pennsylvania Admiralty Court and later George Washington appointed him a Judge of the United States for the District of Pennsylvania.
But Hopkinson was also a composer. He wrote quite a number of popular songs, psalms anthems and ballads. He even wrote a grand opera called “The Temple of Minerva.” By all accounts he was a remarkable person. A co-signatory of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams, wrote of him: “He is one of your pretty, little, curious, ingenious men. His head is not bigger than an apple .. I have not met with anything in natural history more amusing and entertaining than his personal appearance.” What a cruel put down – even for a judge!
Hopkinson died in Philadelphia at the age of 53 “of a sudden apoplectic fit.” He was probably hearing a case with a litigant in person.
Richard Owen became a lieutenant in the Air Force in the Second World War and after the war graduated from Harvard Law School. He went into his father’s law firm in New York and practised for many years before being appointed by President Nixon in 1974 to the federal bench as a Judge of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Justice Owen is – at more than 80 he is still on the bench – a well known composer of operas. Six of them have been performed, the last in February 2003 at the Lincoln Centre in New York.
I have to say, however, that my favourite composer Judge is Alejandro Garcia Caturla. Born in 1906 of a wealthy family in Cuba, he studied composition in Paris and became an avant garde composer who combined Afro-Cuban rhythms and idioms with a starkly modern style. He was highly respected as a composer, particularly in the United States, and in the 1930’s his music was performed by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in New York.
Caturla, however, found it impossible to make a living as a composer. His father told him to get a day job. So, having picked up a law degree, he became a judge – as one does. And he became a surprisingly good judge, still composing all the while. He gained a reputation for defending the rights of the working people and the poor against the abuses of the rich and privileged. He was fearless in the fight against corruption, sending to jail not only corrupt police but corrupt brother judges. He authored several reform laws on juvenile delinquency and set up work programs for teenagers instead of sending them to jail. He must have sympathised deeply with children – he had 11, 8 of them illegitimate.
Although Caturla never wrote an opera, his life reads like one. He died at the age of 34 when a criminal whose case had been listed before him shot him in the chest at point blank range. A bit like the last scene in Tosca. The Cuban chief of police, hearing of his death, was reported as saying: “Thank God they got rid of him.”
I think Caturla is a real inspiration – both for composers and judges. They really ought to have more children.
So the law and music, seemingly remote from each other, can actually be combined very successfully as concurrent careers. Speaking for myself, however, accommodating both can become a little frantic at times.
In 1997, when I was still at the Bar, the great and late Ray Charles did an Australian tour. It was to be a very grand affair. He was to play with the Sydney Symphony in the Opera House, the Melbourne Symphony in the Melbourne Arts Centre and the Queensland Symphony in the Brisbane Entertainment Centre. The promoter wanted an Australian support act but it had to be a class act too. He approached my best mate, singer songwriter Scott Walker, and offered him the chance. But he had to do it with the orchestras, just like Ray Charles.
Scott asked me to do the orchestral arrangements for his songs, which I did. The promoter said: “ Ray Charles’ conductor won’t conduct for a support act. I can’t afford another expensive conductor.” He turned to me and said : “You did the arrangements so you conduct.” No worries.
I planned it so I wouldn’t be in court the week of the Ray Charles tour. Naturally, Murphy’s Law became applicable. At the very last minute a big commercial case in the Federal Court was postponed by a week, to the week of the Ray Charles tour. It was a very important case for my client, a fraud case between oil exploration companies about a highly profitable oil field. A great deal of highly technical evidence, a highly charged atmosphere, a great deal of money at stake. I couldn’t pass the brief at the last moment. And we couldn’t find another conductor at the last moment. No worries.
The first Ray Charles concert was at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday night. It was a complete sellout – the place was packed to the rafters, three and a half thousand people. The orchestra tunes up. Scott and I walk out onto the stage, Scott sits at the piano, I take my place on the conductor’s podium and raise my baton. It’s the very first time I’ve conducted any orchestra in my life.
It was a smashing success. In the next morning’s press the critics went wild with praise. Unfortunately, they didn’t mention us.
Next morning, at 10.15 am I open my case in the Federal Court. It’s going to be a hard fight. There are trolleys full of documents, armies of juniors and solicitors and paralegals. The bell rings and we come out fighting. Noses are bloodied, eyes are blacked. The usual good fun.
At 4.15 pm the bell rings and the case is adjourned for the day. I tear off my robes, dash from the courtroom into a cab, straight to the airport to catch a flight to Melbourne for the concert that night. I arrive at 6 pm, have a 20 minute rehearsal with Scott and the Melbourne Symphony and at 8 pm walk onto the stage at the Melbourne Arts Centre. Another smashing success – the critics haven’t a bad word to say about us – or any word, really.
At 6 am the next morning I’m on a plane back to Sydney. At 10.15 am the bell rings and the fight resumes in the Federal Court. A fraught day but when the bell rings again at 4.15, I dash from the courtroom like Cinderella from the ball, straight to the airport for a flight to Brisbane. Twenty minutes rehearsal with the Queensland Symphony and on stage at 8. Another smashing success – we don’t bother reading the reviews next day.
Wednesday morning –6 am flight back to Sydney. 10.15 the bell rings, another fraught day. Bell rings at 4.15. Run down Macquarie Street to the Opera House for tonight’s concert. Another smashing success etc etc.
Thursday morning 10.15 – the bell rings. I raise my baton for the intro to the first song - the judge gives me a funny look!
It’s times like that I wish I’d taken my Dad’s advice and become a librarian.
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